A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, September 23, 2007
Luke 16:1-13
Remember when you settled down to watch the Lone Ranger or Gene Autry or Bonanza on TV? And remember how easy it was to tell the heroes from the villains, ’cause the good guys always wore white hats and the bad guys wore black?
The producers made it all so simplistic. The bad guys were rotten to the core and the good guys were pure as the driven snow. That’s a common world view: black and white, good and evil, God-fearing or God-hating.
That may explain why today’s parable is startling. Read it carefully and there’s really no getting around it: Jesus told about a steward who was clever, shrewd… and dishonest. And Jesus pointed to this man as an example of how his disciples should live.
The wealthy owner heard an accusation that his business manager had been mishandling funds, and promptly fired him. The manager didn’t have another way to take care of himself. He couldn’t dig trenches and was too proud to beg. So before the manager left he worked out a clever plan for insuring his future security.
He called in his former employer’s debtors, and secretly wrote off 20% to 50% of their debts. In so doing, he rightly assumed they would feel indebted to him the business manager. The wealthy owner discovered the deed. But, rather than throwing the dishonest man into prison, he commended him for being so clever!
Luke then added several morals to the story, the first of which is (and I quote):
• “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone they make welcome you into the eternal homes.”
• Later, verse 11, he says “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will trust you with the true riches?”
• “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another who will give you what is your own?”
• And finally “You cannot serve God and wealth.”
So what are we to make of this? Well, I think we can understand it best by saying that Jesus avoided using black hats and white hats. He recognized there are infinite shades of gray in the world and in human hearts, and he tried to teach his disciples how best to live in a morally ambiguous world.
It’s clear: Jesus was not advocating dishonesty, but he was acknowledging it. He was not advising his disciples to act immorally, but neither was he naïve enough to assume they always wore white hats. It’s a good thing, because if they had been pure and faultless you and I would feel pretty left out.
No, Jesus’ Good News was addressed to God’s people who find themselves caught in dilemmas of choice and chance, trying to do the right thing when the world beckons us to do wrong things.
Jesus and Luke, together, give us several implications from this story:
1)Being shrewd or savvy is different from being criminal;
2) Worldly people are more adept at dealing with ambiguities than are the children of the light.
3) Nothing in our lives is truly black or white, even if we very much want it to be so!
4) What we do here and now matters there and then
5) Our relationship to money and possessions is a pretty good indicator of our spiritual health overall.
Last week I spoke about Mother Teresa and the recently published book of her letters which reveal her spiritual struggles. Several of you commented about your own take on it – about how we somehow are drawn to the few among us who seem to pure and godly, in part because so much of the world is corrupt and self-seeking. Then when a saint seems to fall from her pedestal we’re left confused.
St. Augustine wrote a helpful insight in the fourth century: “If only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and to destroy them. But the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place: sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil, and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various stages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil at times to sainthood.
If we come to church, or go to the scriptures, to get handy labels to stick on the good and the bad, the righteous and the sinful, we’ll be disappointed. Jesus made a ministry out of discarding such easy stereotypes, he said:
• The last will be first, the servant will become the master.
• The one who loses life for him will find it.
• The prostitute, tax collectors and beggar on the street will inherit the realm of God.
So don’t let it surprise you that Jesus told a parable about a dishonest but clever manager who knew how to invest carefully and act prudently in order to prosper tomorrow. Don’t overlook his reminder that his disciples should “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) If you’re going to be a fool, at least be a “fool for Christ.” (1 Corinthians 3:18, 19)
Jesus taught us that we have to immerse ourselves in the world the way it is, without ever losing sight of the promise of the realm of God. If we give in to the temptation to hide in our sanctuary and cluck our tongues at the people “out there” we’ve failed in the very mission that Christ established.
We can’t ignore the fact that he labored among the poor, the sick, the lame, the oppressed, the outcast, the despised – all the people who appeared to wear black hats. Jesus even said to them “the kingdom of heaven is here, among you.” He was never seduced by appearances, achievements or affluence. Instead he showed the world that God acts out of love and justice, and we should, too.
And we know there will be times when we’ll feel very confused and very stuck, not sure what to believe and what to do. There’s only one escape from these moral quandaries and dilemmas of life. That’s fundamentalism – rendering the world in stark black and white – good and evil, pure and profane.
That kind of Fundamentalism cuts across all religious languages – Christians, Muslims and Jews can each claim they are pure and right, while all others are corrupt and wrong. That kind of Fundamentalism can come from the left or the right of the political spectrum.
But didn’t Jesus teach his followers how to live with moral ambiguity? The laws of the Temple saw black and white, good and evil. Jesus pointed to infinite shades of gray.
The Gospel certainly doesn’t suggest “anything goes.” But it moves us beyond the Law written on stone to the Law written in the life of Jesus.
In this complicated parable Jesus seemed to say that his followers should not be naïve and foolish about the ways of the world. As Christians we struggle with the feeling that we’re pulled in two directions. We’re counseled to be in the world but not of it… somehow living authentically but also riding above the fray so that we can keep hoping and trusting in God’s purposes.
Erich Hoffer, the longshoreman and social commentator who died a couple of decades ago, once remarked: “Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.”
As the parable shows, the worst of us has some good inside and the best of us has some evil inside. Black hats and white hats are no help at all. Instead, when you find yourself standing at a fork in the road and you have to make a decision, consider this: Jesus showed his followers that we are called and commissioned in love. And when we’re being true disciples we remember:
• It’s wrong to use people and love things.
• It’s right to love people and use things.
Spirit calls us to live wisely and faithfully, to be mindful and alert, perhaps to be shrewd and clever, but always to be loving.
Spirit calls us to keep faithfully on our path and to recognize that others who see differently and who express their faith in different ways are neither different up nor different down.
And in the fullness of time the rich landowner – to whom everything belongs – will come, and will see what we have done; and this one alone will decide who has lived righteously.